An über hydromechanical complex is set to rise in the Everglades when “engineers next month will begin building one of the world's largest manmade reservoirs - the size of a small city - as efforts continue to restore natural water flow to the Everglades,” the Associated Press via Wired Newsreports.

The “flagship” project of a multi-decade, multi-billion dollar wetland restoration initiative, this staggeringly huge theatrum machinarum, “roughly 25 square miles in area, is set for completion in 2010. It will hold 62 billion gallons of water, equivalent to about 5.1 million residential swimming pools, and will be seven miles across at its widest point.”

It's so vast, in fact, that it will lower water levels at the much, much bigger Lake Okeechobee. And “when you stand on one side of this reservoir, you will not see the other side.”

Moreover, “most reservoirs are built amid mountains and valleys or where a natural water source feeds the pool. In this case, 30 million tons of earth will be dug from flat land and surrounded by a 26-foot high, 21-mile long levee, making it larger than any other reservoir not connected to a natural source.”

"The largest item in the measure, approved July 19 on a voice vote, is a $3.8-billion package of projects for the upper Mississippi River and Illinois Waterway. That includes $1.8 billion for seven new, 1,200-foot-long locks on the rivers and $1.6 billion for a variety of environmental restoration work."

Senate Backs New Controls for Projects by EngineersBy FELICITY BARRINGER/NYT

WASHINGTON, July 19 — The Senate voted Wednesday to put new controls on water projects of the Army Corps of Engineers, with proponents of the legislation repeatedly citing the experience of New Orleans, where corps-designed levees and waterways failed to protect the city from Hurricane Katrina.

The legislation, an amendment to a measure authorizing new corps projects, calls for the creation of independent panels of scientific and economic experts with authority to weigh in on projects under consideration by the corps. A decision to ignore the panel’s advice could be used against the corps in legal proceedings.

Flood control, navigation and environmental restoration projects costing $40 million or more, or particularly controversial projects, would be subject to such review under the amendment, which passed the Senate 54 to 46.

A companion amendment, intended to create an interagency panel to recommend priorities among competing projects, failed by a vote of 19 to 80.

Despite the resounding defeat of the second measure, environmental groups hailed the new requirements for independent review as a first step in what they see as needed reform. The new controls were attached to a $11.6 billion measure that adds scores of new projects on the corps’ to-do list. The basic authorization for the water projects, often attacked as pork-barrel projects with little national significance passed on a voice vote Wednesday evening.

“New Orleans was betrayed by the corps and its friends in Congress,” Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, said during the debate Wednesday afternoon, citing the collapse of levees that were constructed on a base of sinking soil that weakened them. “The record of the Corps of Engineers cries out for independent review,” added Mr. McCain, who sponsored the amendment with Senator Russ D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin.

The amendment had been opposed by many farm-state senators, like Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, who warned that the new process might slow projects crucial to the transportation of corn, soybeans and other crops to ports and to world markets. Senator Christopher S. Bond, Republican of Missouri, warned that the new review panels would be taken over by special interests who, he said, “would be determined to undo projects for other reasons, policy reasons.”

He said the Senate should not “be handing government functions over to some unelected commission.”

This week, the White House budget office criticized the overall authorization measure for including projects outside the agency’s basic mission, despite an existing backlog of work that, in total, would cost $58 billion.

The water projects bill, the first since 2000, gives the government the authority — but not the money — to underwrite projects including a $3.4 million improvement of the locks on the Upper Mississippi and Illinois Rivers and $1.5 billion for ongoing restoration of the Everglades.

The House passed a similar bill a year ago, before Hurricanes Katrina and Rita laid waste to the Gulf Coast.

Mr. Bond and Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma and chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, had sought to circumvent the creation of the independent review panels by offering a separate amendment, setting the threshold for review at $100 million instead of $40 million and giving the top official of the corps discretion to decide that a review might not be necessary. That amendment failed, 49 to 51.

Malia Hale, director of national restoration and water resources for the National Wildlife Federation, praised the Senate action on independent review as a response “to many of the things that arose with Hurricane Katrina.” She added that the underlying bill “has a lot of unnecessary pork but a lot of good things, like Everglades restoration.”

Anonymous

July 30, 2006 at 3:48:00 AM CDT

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